An almost weekly update of environmental news, particularly marine updates, with occasional splatters of transportation, indigenous, ideas of sustainability and sustainable development from around the world.

31.1.07

Great Barrier Reef Could Be Dead In 20 Years

31 Jan 2007 (TODAY)

SYDNEY - Australia's famed Great Barrier Reef, treasured as the world'slargest living organism, could be dead within two decades by globalwarming, scientists warned in a report yesterday.

The World Heritage site, stretching over more than 345,000sq km offAustralia's east coast, will become "functionally extinct", the scientistswere quoted as saying in The Age newspaper.

The assessment is contained in a leaked draft of a major internationalreport by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) to be released later this year, the newspaper said.

A chapter on Australia in the report on the global impact of climatechange on the world warns that coral bleaching in the reef is likely tobecome an annual occurrence by as early as 2030 due to warmer, more acidicseas. Bleaching occurs when the plant-like organisms that make up coraldie and leave behind the white limestone skeleton of the reef.

Some 500 experts are meeting in Paris this week, ahead of the release onFriday of the IPCC's first report - since 2001 - on the state ofscientific knowledge on global warming.

The report will be followed in April by volumes focusing on the impact ofclimate change and the social-economic costs of reducing the emission ofgreenhouse gases, which have been blamed for global warming.

Earlier, warnings that climate change was damaging the reef - a majortourist attraction - prompted the Australian government to announce latelast year that it was considering using vast sunshades to protect thecoral.

Australia's Tourism Minister Fran Bailey said the government was lookingat funding the use of shade cloths to protect vulnerable parts of thegiant reef off the coast of Queensland state.

The cloth, which is being developed by researchers in Queensland, would beheld in place by floating pontoons. - AFP